NPRA recovers GH¢27m from defaulting employers 

By Kingsley Webora TANKEH

The National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA) has recovered GH¢27million from employers that defaulted on workers’ pension contributions.

Speaking at a press conference in Accra, Deputy CEO-NPRA Victor Azuma Mejida said this represents only 30 percent of total amounts in arrears. He pledged his outfit’s resolve to recover more, adding that 40 newly-trained prosecutors will soon be deployed to intensify enforcement across the country.

Mr. Mejida warned employers that deduct tier-two contributions from workers’ salaries but fail to remit them.

“Failure or refusal to pay these contributions spells doom for the worker.”

“Reports from trustees indicate that some employers have refused to pay contributions despite having deducted this amount from employees’ earnings. Some have not even registered a scheme for their staff,” he lamented.

Under Section 83 of the National Pensions Act (Act 766), employers who default in paying workers’ contributions face a 3 percent monthly compounding penalty and possible prosecution.

Mr. Mejida therefore urged employers to comply with the regulation or face the wrath of the law and be “named and shamed” through the media. He noted that the authority is beefing-up efforts to clamp down on recalcitrant employers.

He revealed that the authority deployed compliance officers across the country in 2025 to inspect employer books, after which defaulters were formally notified – with  some put on court-enforced payment plans while “a number of recalcitrant employers” were prosecuted.

“We are intensifying employer inspection as enshrined in Section 27 of Act 766,” he said.

While acknowledging that government itself is among the defaulting employers, Mr. Mejida said it is a “legacy issue” the authority is engaging the state to resolve.

“These are legacy issues and they are currently being worked on. The authority is engaging government to rectify this and get it to honor its due to workers,” he added.

Total pension assets under management stood at approximately GH¢109billion as of end-2025, according to NPRA. However, a chunk of these funds are concentrated in government securities. Fund managers have called on NPRA to reduce the 75 percent mandatory exposure to government securities to allow room for diversification.

Even though the mandatory guideline that permits up to 75 percent allocation to government securities has not been reduced, NPRA’s Director of Standards and Compliance, Anthony Acquah, has confirmed that pension funds’ exposure to government securities has declined from 75 percent to 66 percent.

“Gradually, you need to rebalance portfolios. You just can’t move that fast,” he noted. “We have not reduced it. But the current approach to regulation and dynamics in the economy make it much more investment-oriented in terms of diverting investment from government bonds.”

He confirmed that fund managers are actively increasing exposure to equities and alternative investments. “Equities are going up right now. Alternatives are going up right now. And government debt is coming down,” he noted.

He noted that the 25 percent ceiling for alternative investments – which wasn’t fully utilised previously – is now “almost exhausted”.

When pressed on whether NPRA plans to lower the 75 percent cap to force further diversification in pension investments, Director of the Informal Sector, Emmanuel Dagbanu, asserted that the figure is a maximum, not a target. “A particular scheme can decide to do only 40 percent,” he clarified.

Mr. Mejida said his outfit is reviewing the pension investment guidelines to encourage more funding into the real sector including infrastructure and SME financing, citing an example where only GH¢45million pension-backed funding supported 45 SMEs – creating nearly 300,000 jobs.

The authority announced it will soon launch a “pensions digital ecosystem” to ease enrolment onto a dedicated Tier 3 informal sector pension scheme, which is also yet to be launched.

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